This is my first reflective post in a while on Code My Own Road, I try not to do too many of them because I guess you guys will probably get a bit annoyed if I’m always talking about myself.
The reason I want to be reflective for a bit is because I have some great news. I recently left my full time position to start my own company.
My Company
The company is called Rymera Web Co. We do web development and optimization of websites.
It’s been a few couple of months now and things are really starting to kick along. I’ve been helping a few select clients with their sites and also scouting for new work. It’s good to be getting back into the service side of things and I’m super happy to be doing it for myself.
Starting a business has been a dream of mine for literally a decade and for some reason I’ve been hesitant to take the jump. Now that I’m here I’m wondering why it took me so long.
Looking back on this blog I’ve gone through phases of concentrating hard on service, doing lots of freelancing. Then I made a shift toward products and thought that was the holy grail.
Now I’m thinking somewhere in between is where I’d like to be.
At the moment all of my attention (full time and then some) is toward the service business. But I have some big plans brewing for products including a couple of apps in development.
As of right now though, I’m short on time because I am trying to land a few more website projects to build up the repeat customers. But it’s seriously fun times!
eBooks
In some of my downtime I have also been distilling some of my thoughts into Amazon Kindle eBooks.
This has been a really fascinating experience, I have to say. I’ve released 3 books so far, 2 of which are going well. Their prices are $2.99 up to $3.99 (they’re only short books).
It’s a revenue stream of around $100 a month at the moment from 2 books which I find extremely interesting.
I’m going to play around with this a bit more, I have one more book to write myself and then I’ll probably attempt to outsource some book writing. The one I’m writing at the moment is a mammoth though, so it’s taking a while. Nearly half way there.
Hiring writers
I’ve had a little shop around for writers and I figure I can get a book written (of around 15,000 words) for somewhere around the $300-400 mark. Which means all I have to do is write the book outline and give a bit of guidance and it will be out there making money.
It’s still quite an investment though and given that one of my books pretty much tanked (although in hindsight it probably just fell into the wrong niche) I will have to watch my niche selection very carefully.
I’ve heard of people earning $1k a month all the way up to $35k a month. Seems like it’s starting to be the latest craze, which is kind of why I want to get in early and create a few good ebooks before it gets filled with rubbish. I’ve started a new section on the site for ebooks, so I’ll keep you all posted.
ThirstyAffiliates and Simple Page Tester; my two premium WordPress plugins
ThirstyAffiliates, the WordPress affiliate link management plugin I released late last year is still going strong. I receive a handful of sales every month, but since I’ve stopped promoting it at all it’s beginning to stagnate a little (I can feel it).
Simple Page Tester, my split testing plugin for WordPress has pretty much slowed to a trickle. Just a couple of sales a month these days.
It’s not that it’s a bad plugin or anything, the technology behind it is quite good and the plugin works brilliantly.
It’s just that the niche itself is a tad dry and taken up by the big players (Google, Unbounce, and Visual Website Optimizer). So I’m starting to think about what to do with this plugin long term.
I had a crazy idea to implement some of the split testing technology into other plugins, even ThirstyAffiliates. But I’m yet to test if that will work and what market there would be for it.
Marketing is a massive time killer and I’m still no closer to automating that side of either of these plugins. Not from lack of trying. I’m open to ideas in the comments if you have them!
Teach Yourself Websites
This little web design ecourse I created about a year and half ago is going bananas. I’m getting 30-50 subscribers a day sometimes with new monthly subscriber amounts well into the triple digits.
The weird thing, I have done literally squat with this site since the start of the year. And even then, it was just to redesign the landing page a little.
It gets shared quite a bit by the subscribers because I ask them after they subscribe to share with their friends that they are taking the course (this has been a great tactic). Now if I can only replicate it’s success elsewhere.
So, what’s new with you?
Well that’s about it from me for now. I have plenty more going on but this is the important stuff.
If you need website help, especially WordPress, let me know. Otherwise, leave me a comment and lets chat about… stuff 
Hey josh, nice work with the split testing plugin, I think I could use something like that in the very near future so I’ll keep it bookmarked.
Also, thanks for link, I appreciate it. Kindle books are pretty simple to do even in your spare time if you outsource the writing. It does cost a few hundred to get a good book, but most of the time I’m making my money back within 3 to 6 weeks.
Thanks Eric, it was a great post, no worries about the link!
Outsourcing the writing is definitely something I’m going to consider. Even maybe outsourcing parts of it (like this ridiculous book I’m writing right now). Good to hear that if the niche is selected well then it’s easy to make the money back.
If anyone is looking to get into Kindle books, I recommend you check out Eric’s site and his book Publishing for Profit. I’ll try to get a review up of it soon.